The NHS in Hull paid out more than £12m in negligence claims last year.

Figures from NHS Resolution, which handles claims on behalf of NHS trusts, show the NHS had to pay £12.2m in negligence claims in the area in the financial year 2017/18.

The total is made up of £6.6m in actual damages, £1.2m in defence costs and £4.3m in claimant costs.

Of the £12.2m, £416,302 was paid by the Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals (HEY) NHS Trust for clinical claims against NHS organisations where the incident took place before April 1, 1995.

Castle Hill Hospital

HEY Hospitals NHS Trust, based on sites at Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital, shelled out a total of £11.6m in 2017/18. The Trust is one of the largest of its kind in England and provides acute care for a local population of 600,000 and 1.2 million people for its tertiary services.

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A spokeswoman for HEY Hospitals NHS Trust said: “While we aim to provide the highest quality of care possible to all of our patients, we acknowledge that there are occasions when things don’t go as planned or we do not deliver the required standard of care.

"In cases such as this, and where there is a legitimate cause for redress, we work through NHS Resolution to settle claims as quickly as possible. The level of claims made against the Trust remains low considering staff across our hospitals have over one million contacts with patients every year.”

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There are four clinical negligence schemes that cover defence and claimant legal costs as well as damages.

One, the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST), is for incidents that occurred after April 1995, while another, the Existing Liabilities Scheme (ELS), is for those that occurred before that period.

The third covers claims against former Regional Health Authorities abolished in 1996 and the last covers clinical negligence liabilities transferred to the Department of Health following the abolition of health bodies.

The emergency department at Hull Royal Infirmary

Because figures from NHS Resolution only include CNST and ELS, it means that the total amount paid under all four schemes could be even higher.

Nationally, total payments relating to NHS clinical schemes increased by £520.4 million (30 per cent) from £1.7bn to £2.2bn.

This is despite the number of new clinical negligence claims falling slightly from 10,686 received in 2016/17 to 10,673 in 2017/18. NHS Resolution said the cost increase was partly due to pay-outs for claims that were made in previous years.

However, £404 million of the additional expenditure was because of a change in the Personal Injury Discount Rate (PIDR) on March 20, 2017.

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“Unless we deal with this, a sizeable chunk of the new money being promised will be swallowed up by these claims rather than used for much-needed investment to help the mass of patients.

“Part of this [the increasing amount spent] is down to a foolish change in the way compensation is calculated, which will hopefully be addressed by Parliament, but this still paints a hugely troubling picture.”

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